The United States has just experienced two tragic events in a very short time. The floods in Colorado, and the shooting at the Navy yard in Washington DC cause Sadhguru to reflect on how we can help victims rebuild their lives.

Sadhguru: Humanity is suffering in a variety of ways on a daily basis. When natural calamities happen, the suffering happens in large doses. And if the suffering happening to the rest of humanity does not make your heart beat or allow you to feel some empathy to what is happening around you, it means your humanity is frozen. A calamity is essentially human, but when suffering happens in large doses around us, it is definitely a test to see whether our humanity is still active or frozen.

This flood that happened in Colorado was a natural process. If you live alongside a river, floods don’t come every day, but they do happen once in a while. Because we as a society are unprepared to handle it, it becomes a disaster. Tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes are not the disasters; the disaster is in terms of what has been lost. People who lost their family – someone who is dear to them – that is a disaster. Someone lost his livelihood, that’s a disaster. Someone lost his home, that’s a disaster. Someone doesn’t have something to eat tonight, that’s a disaster. This disaster is not just on the physical plane. A human being’s suffering is hugely within himself. A few packets of food may somehow get to him and he may get to eat it, but the fact that he has to sit on the street side and eat, instead of in his home with his family, is a real disaster.

Both of these incidents are a reminder for us that human life is very brief and very fragile. Watch your breath right now, inhalation, exhalation, inhalation, exhalation…if the next inhalation does not happen, it’s over. Just see how fragile it is! Don’t take it for granted. It’s extremely fragile. People are going about life as if they are immortal. You always think death is something that happens to somebody else, not you. Not true, it will happen to you and me. None of us have come with any guarantee for our lives. Don’t think it’s a long life. However young and healthy we may be, tomorrow morning I could be dead or you could be dead. We are not wishing it upon ourselves, but it’s possible.

Providing the necessary support, psychologically and spiritually, helping someone to come out of a disaster and learn to put one’s life back on track, is the most important part of our work – the very fundamental of Isha. There are powerful methods with which one can alleviate one’s mental turmoil and instill a certain sense of peace and wellbeing within oneself. People can come out of the tragedy and put their lives back on track to live as joyful human beings, going beyond the disaster they have witnessed.